Monday, October 20, 2014

Grant Tarbard lives in Essex, England. He has worn many hats as a journalist and currently serves as chief editor at The Screech Owl, a UK literary journal (http://thescreechowl.com). His poems have been widely published; WK Press will release his first collection, Yellow Wolf, later this year.

The Body Climbs a Ladder

inspired by Seraphim by Anselm Kiefer

When all that is war has taken all landscapebut insomniac miles of stone and bone

under cracked pigments of fawnsimmering with violence.

The body climbs a ladder that endswith an eternity of Brownshirts

and a hint of an angel's wing,hope from hopelessness.

And the sky is a seed of a uniform,this is what the toppling body found;

the walls are painted with soiltrapped by stares and dark straw

that seem to have a physicality,an emotional charge

that amplifies the experienceof the body's unhorsing.

The quiet leaves riot,and the earth that runs through this land

is a body, at the bottom, head rolled awayaccusingly as if the body is to say "too little, too late".

What Lies Behind A Closed Doorinspired by Black Square by Kazimir Malevich

Embrace logics absence,beyond feeling there is void,

and what lies behind a closed door?All objects are an abstractionexploding in a textureof ebony parchment,

what lies deep in this burnt paper worldwithin a throaty loss of gravity.

A blacked out city's lightorbits in white omission.

Kino of the geometric blurdecreased boxlike intertwining

with infinity floating in equilibrium,a galaxy funnelled.

What lies beyond the frame?All objects are an abstraction.

Mondayinspired by Galileo's 1616 drawings of the Moon

Dimples beholden to light,a reflection of orange peel. I can almost make out the facethe peak of the nose,

the shadow of the right eyea crest of lip, a sunburnt forehead.A gravitational monographwithin the vividness of the midnight oil,six spherical bites, an apple that's about to fallon the sunless grassland of a patchwork Eden.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

by Matthew DickmanDiane and I sitting in the dark like sitting in a death you actually want, a death you have always wished for, looking toward the lights of Hollywood, the long legs of swimmers, cocktails and rum made out of water and iodine. Earlier that day something like twelve city blocks crumbled inside me every time I thought of you and how walking toward her always felt perfect like a silver key with a red ribbon announcing its specialness and how I would suddenly burn awaylike a shot of whiskey some bride-to-be dropped a match into. Somewhere Johnny Depp is sleeping or turning to his right because a woman is there and has touched his elbow with the soft cloud of her fingers, or he’s facing the mirror and listening to all the gods inside him begin to rage; the god of childhood and the god of his mother, his father. Diane and I are standing on a street corner together in the world, after the credits, in the crushed-ice rain, looking westward toward the dark-sunglass- Coppertone-white-beach-heaven that waits for us and us alone.

Woman with Flowered Hat,

Roy Lichtenstein, 1963

G.L.O.W.by Cathy Park HongGorgeous Ladies of Wrestlingin their spandex regalia parade the Vegas suburbs, among spider cottoned smoke trees and foreclosed one-tracts,half-full whirlpools spiralinga confetti of limbless G.I. Joes;the sun is at high lament, and Mountain Fiji is barefoot, and cuts her toe on a Sudafed foil. Mountain Fiji, you ate too many hamburguesas! Now you have the diabetes and tonight you must body-slam Vallerie Vendetta. Look at how Ebony and Habana with their bedazzled eyelashes laugh at you. You hate them. They smoke reefers in the Tiki ballroom where sheets of moonlit rain pour whenever Lala sings Blue Moon, but the moon never comes, though sadness always does, like Palestina in her hijab and her ammo camo bikini. She’s always supposed to lose to Hadar the Brain, who is the Good one. When you made love to Palestina,a sob was stuck in your throat and that sob remained in your throat, an itching nest that threatened your sinus. You need a good cry like a good sneeze, and you keep shudderingyour face to make it come. Bahama Mama lends you sunscreenand you smear it on your broad nose and you wave at hooting boyswhose features seem not quite formed, like God started pinching out their noses and eyes and then left, because he got distracted. You shrink to the size of Thumbelina on a TV in La Jolla. She never wins. It never comes. I am always waiting.

“Untitled” by Julie Mehretu, 2013.

Watercolor, ink, spit bite and etching on paper.

ICEBERGS, ILULISSATby Jean ValentineIn blue-green air & water Godyou have come back for us, to our fiberglass boat.

You have come back for us, & I’m afraid.(But you never left.)

Great sadness at harms. But nothing that comes now, after,can be like before.Even when the icebergs are gone, and the millions of suns

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